Sunday, August 20, 2006

I'm a socialist!

Incredible nerd that I am, I've been reading, "The Political Economy of the Minimal State". I?m enjoying it so far; I'm almost certain I understand whole chunks of it and while I'm still having trouble with the word "deontology", reading it makes me feel smart. The book is a collection of four long essays. The first one is written by Anthony de Jasay who I'd never heard of until recently. Coincidentally I found all these essays of his here just the other day and his most recent essay is on immigration! Yay! Instead of some enjoyable preaching to the receptive choir, he accuses libertarians who favor open immigration (and he seems to agree that there are a lot of us) of being socialists!

Those who claim that in the name of liberty they must let any and all would-be immigrants take a share are, then, not liberals but socialists professing share-and-share alike egalitarianism on an international scale.

Now I know how Mandy feels!

The reason for this claim is that immigrants would be able to use rich countries infrastructure, amenities and public order that were built by citizens and citizens parents etc. This is obviously true, but it also seems true to me that there are plenty of (American lets say) citizens who are also using those same things without building or paying for them, what does de Jaysay say about them? I donno. But anyway, surely this line of argument just suggests that would be immigrants should pay for the right to immigrate?

Fortunately for me Arnold Kling doesn't like this argument either so it can now be safely dismissed, never to bother me again.